Abstract

Aging of our national structural inventory and the fact that many artificial structures are carrying greater average loads than predicted during their designing stage, have significantly increased the need to monitor their health and stability performance. In order to ensure the safety and serviceability of these structures as well as to prevent disastrous consequences due to the structural displacement, periodic monitoring and in-depth analysis of their structural behaviour based on a large set of variables contributing to the deformation are highly demanded. Deformation in which refers to the changes of a deformable body undergoes in its shapes, dimension and position can be detected and monitored using several platforms and approaches. In addition to the discussions on the conventional geodetic techniques such as accelerometer, close range photogrammetry and laser interferometer, this paper highlights the current and the future trends in structural health monitoring studies such as the use of total station, modern Global Positioning System (GPS) techniques and terrestrial laser scanning method. Based on series of observation campaigns conducted at various large scale engineering structures (e.g. breakwater, wide span bridge and high rise building), further discussion includes the suitability and the practicality of these techniques for structural health monitoring in Malaysia.